The Veiled Path
by Miss Lonelyhearts
Summary: As the Hero and Walter emerge from Shadelight Dungeon, Ben Finn must put the pieces back together. This is his version of things from that point forward. in this tale, the Hero is named Rose. . .after the aunt she never knew. the sister never forgotten


Ben supposed that of the things he might include in his next chapter, provided the circumstance of quill and paper ever presented itself again beyond Aurora's next, far-flung dawn, was the extraordinary quantity of _loneliness_ a hero must endure in his or her lifetime. If he'd ever thought himself alone before meeting one, Ben amended the definition in his mind. For the princess as much as himself.

As he watched her slump over Beck in the temple, dark head fighting sleep, Ben decided _adventure_ could use a bit of editorial revision as well. He'd been meaning to revisit that misnomer since Bloodstone, and again while watching Swift's brains arc across the castle wall. What an _adventure_ that had been. Ben turned and spat into the dust outside the temple entrance.

Finding her in the desert, though, had been the worst of it - hands curled into claws, tears tracking through the grit caked on her cheeks – and it definitely qualified as more than simple adventure. A great deal more. With a shiver, he recalled the circle of sand around her, (well, what had once been sand) blasted to a melted web of glass between the dunes. Kalin had been afraid to touch her, and if Ben hadn't been so chuffed to find her in the first place, so palpably relieved, he'd have thought better about rousing someone with the power of fire in their fingertips. And a mind full of madness. When the Crawler touched normal sods wandering in the desert they simply withered and fell.

It seemed a hero went down with a far more explosive sort of resistance.

Blinking at his own fatigue, at the memory of her dry lips and her wet eyes, he listened to the princess coo in her darkened corner. She had Sir Walter's head cradled in her lap. _Rose_, he reminded himself, not the princess. It was necessary to think of her that way, in the event that the power to read minds and silently chastise handsome onlookers numbered among her heroic talents.

"It has been a day since she slept." Kalin's rich voice crept up behind him, and Ben flinched. For a people with so few structures left to hide behind, Aurorans practiced remarkable stealth. The warrior leaned against the doorframe opposite him. "Convince her to rest. We cannot sail with them both in this condition."

"You ever tried arguing with someone like her?" Ben whispered.

"A person of deep magic can be intimidating." She crossed her painted arms over her chest and examined Ben a little too closely.

"No, dear, I meant a princess." He replied, grim smile tugging the next words. "Bloody bullheaded."

Rose finally looked up at him, olive skin made darker where she sat beyond the reach of the altar lamps. Her fingers smoothed where streaks of black gore no longer stained Walter's face. They could afford a day of rest. But as he crossed the shadowy temple floor, Ben wasn't sure they could actually find it here. There was always the eternal variety, but he doubted that's what Kalin and her priests were prescribing.

"Come on, big hero. Come slay the Beast of Wretched Sleeplessness." He squatted beside her, searching the eyes buried somewhere in all the desert grime. They were hazel, if not utterly haunted. Ben liked them either way. "He'll be fine. Tougher'n a balverine's teat, our Walter."

Cheerful vulgarity fell a little flat in the temple, but the princess gave him a dry laugh in pity.

"Until yesterday I'd have sworn the same." She said after a while, fingertips combing tufts of grey that would never stay down. To his surprise, Rose's unoccupied hand sought his, covering it with a touch that should have been warm but wasn't. "Help me up? My legs haven't forgotten how to sleep, it seems."

"Ah she sees reason! It's a desert miracle." Ben let her arrange the old soldier's head on a pillow, and then pulled the hero to her feet.

"Shut it, Finn." Her voice didn't wobble, even if her legs did.

"Shutting it, your high-" He coughed. "Let's get you to bed. Er, to _a_ bed, not _the_ bed."

She groaned, sliding his shoulder under hers, reminding him of her height as much as her unflappability, and they shuffled out into the nighttime city. The silence of the place was somehow greater out in the open, and Ben struggled to hear insects or birds or anything but the shuttered sobs from within Aurora's homes. Nothing came back to him but the glitter of stars above, and they were frozen. It even_ smelled_ quiet. His stomach rumbled and he put a hand to his vest just over the offending noise, too loud among the sad hush where they walked.

Rose swung her head, watching the lights dim in each carved window, and said nothing as they reached the empty house priestess Mara set aside for them. Though, as he'd seen during the preceding days, there were plenty of empty homes in the city now, and a devious part of Ben itched to creep through them all. He could call it a search for supplies, or he could accept the macabre reality of his nature. The captain put a hand on the heavy door, eyes sketching one last time across the abandoned main square, and they went inside.

While she climbed the ladder to the bed in the loft, Ben unslung his rifle and scabbard. He laid them beside his pallet, a warm, cushy thing overburdened with embellished blankets, and worked some of the ridiculous buttons and buckles his brain refused to count since joining Albion's army. Vest, cuffs, belts, spats, and boots. But the sound of Rose doing the same, unlacing and sighing out of her leathers just a few feet away, did nothing to ease him into the ritual of sleep. He had no door to bar, and the screen separating his bed from the rest of the house was admirable more for its decoration than its modesty. So, Ben did as he knew best in these situations. He yammered.

"When he was ranting, Walter kept saying a name. Jack or Jackie or sommat." He'd have mentioned the mellifluous and numerous _balls_ that issued from the old soldier in his delirium, but decided against conjuring genitals of any kind at this point. The question, which wasn't so much a question as a technique, traipsed along the walls to the loft. Ben let it hang there as he pulled his shirt off, wriggling his bare toes on the stone floor.

"Yes." Rose called down to him, pallet creaking somewhere over Ben's head. "He meant me. It's an old nickname. Older than my actual name, in fact." Her voice was tight, but not unkind, and as he crawled under the blankets Ben allowed himself some pride for teasing a bedtime story from the princess. Heroes had the best ones, after all. Rose didn't have his gift for elaboration, but her presence more than made up for it. The lamp went out in the loft, but her voice still carried a spark.

"As a child, I slashed at Logan's ankles with a wooden sword. Pestered him for most of a day. When he'd finally had enough of playing the patient brother, he turned to fight me. Walter said I dueled as fiercely as the . . . the Jack of Blades." Rose huffed in the dark, a sound so like the child Ben imagined her to be; roguish and sweet and in over her head.

"Sir Sentimental. Who knew?" He replied, flopping onto his back to stare at the curve of the ceiling where his lamplight flickered. His brothers had never been patient with him. Like everything from shoes to shingles, they just couldn't afford it. Ben reached out to touch his rifle.

"He hasn't called me Jack in years." Came Rose's voice from above, and then they fell silent for a long while, as if Walter himself had entered the room.

The desert hadn't swallowed her. Ben hadn't lost her, he hadn't failed her, and the only thing keeping him awake was the mysterious thud in his chest. It sounded like something shriveled drawing itself toward life, less painful than inconvenient, and even when he closed his eyes Ben saw only the crackle of singed sand spread out around her. She breathed evenly in the loft, pallet squawking now and then.

"Sleep well, _princess_." He smirked up at the ceiling. When she didn't respond he doused the lamp and spoke, louder. "Sleep well, Jack."

"Don't call me that, either." Rose mumbled under her blankets.

Growing up with their stories, heroes made him feel all sorts of grand things. Even in a place called _Gunk_ a boy who could read might find himself feeling brave instead of bullied, cunning instead of thick as bricks. But it was never anything like this. This wasn't adventure or intrigue. It was real, and there was that thud again to remind him. Ben raked a hand through his gritty hair and smiled into the shadows and moonlight that painted the high walls up to the loft.

"Sweet dreams, arseflower."

Rose snorted, and laughed hysterically into her pillow, and Ben discovered his new favorite way to fall asleep.

.

.

Weight snatched him from dreams. Weight crushing the breath from his chest, but also something more immediate on the edge of the bed. Ben's eyes opened. A shape near his feet moved and he cursed flagrantly when Rose came into view.

"You lied to me." She said, voice solemn and plain. As he sat up, she settled more fully on the pallet. "The darkness. You said you hadn't seen it, that it didn't touch you. But you were just dreaming about it weren't you?"

Shaking his head, heart still banging a wet curse of its own in his chest, Ben glowered at what he could see of her in the faint light.

"They could do with more doors and locks here. Cultural necessity." He dragged a hand over his face, fingers rubbing in blissful circles over his eyes, and found her still waiting for an answer when his palm slid way. It was too late, and too late in the night, to drum up an excuse. Like most liars, Ben wielded the truth just as easily. "I didn't want to worry you."

"Ah, then you've failed twice over." Rose didn't smile, but when her face floated into the smattering of moonlight, it looked to Ben like she might have been more than worried. And less than angry. Still, she gave him nothing but trouble when she spoke so low in her throat. She patted the jut of his knee under the blankets. "Just don't do it again. Secrets got us into this mess, and I'd rather break that particular family tradition."

He nodded, swallowing what felt like a bag of sand. The priestess had given her a long tunic, red and gold with an open neck, and Ben raised an eyebrow at her lack of pants. She raised one right back for his lack of shirt. Together they nodded, accepting and unchallenged.

"Noted." A voice in his throat croaked. Under her hand, under the blankets, under his breeches, the skin of Ben's leg grew hot. Darkness hid a lot of things, but he couldn't count the number of times it also revealed the true nature of a person. Since the house was hardly pitch-black, and they were mostly friends, Ben thought they'd land in the middle of knowing what to do. "May I help you with . . .was there something else?"

"Move over, Captain." Her brief humor vanished. This woman who crawled to the head of his bed had other items on the hero agenda. Ben held the blankets down when she tried to pull at them.

"As you're _deposed_ royalty, I don't think the chain of command applies to you now." When she didn't pout or smile, he squinted at Rose. The hope he harbored (yes, he supposed that was what an author would call it) might be young but it wasn't fragile. Rather like the object of its inspiration herself. Ben tilted his head. "You can't just order me about."

She looked out the high window, giving him a silver-lined view of her profile and the column of her neck. In this place, more than anywhere else in their travels, she wasn't anything she'd been raised to be. Not a Rose, not a Jack, and even less a princess where darkness settled into her face. To Ben she seemed the greatest hero yet to be discovered. And he'd read enough about them to know the good ones. When she replied he felt the instant, now-familiar regret that he hadn't met her sooner, perhaps when they'd both swung wooden swords.

"Benjamin, please make some room for me."

"If you insist." Because he couldn't look anywhere else, he focused on the blankets as he pushed them aside. Rose tucked herself behind him and Ben turned to the wall. "But only because there's safety in numbers." He assured her. She shoved her arm beneath the pillow and under his head, curling around him. Warmth overtook them, chest to back, thigh to thigh. He'd been much smaller the last time a woman touched his hair like Rose did, and the comparative image was bittersweet. His body made no mistake of other comparisons, though, and since she appreciated the full capacity of his candor, Ben obliged them both. "And two is suddenly my favorite number."

"Oh? You boasted about four once." Rose mumbled to the back of his neck.

"Lies. Exaggeration is the endowment of pirates and brigands." He caught her hand as it traced his ear, and held it still over his heart; bloody, tittering bird of an organ.

"And men." Like a proper scoundrel, the princess toyed with the hair under her fingers, splaying over his chest.

"Especially those," sighed Ben. As they must, muscles relaxed by degrees under the press of sleep, and the two of them sank deeper into the bed. Rose's arm went slack across his ribs, and Ben could finally hear insects outside. It felt like a bona fide evening, almost like home and almost without pain. Of course, he had to smash that, too. "Do you want to know what I saw? What it showed me?"

Behind him, she hardly stirred because she hadn't been resting either. Ben decided to try her out at cards one day. Rose was a natural deceiver.

"It won't make you sleep any better. Go on, if you like." She said.

"My brother Quentin. And my rifle was a pellet gun again. Damnedest feeling." Ben squeezed his eyes shut, nose almost touching the smooth clay of the wall. He'd been so sure he could take them. He could kill every last soldier filling their hovel with red and white and the shuffle of boots. He could do it, small as he was. In the dark, a better darkness than his Crawler visions, Rose hugged him with a hand tight over his heart. "All the weight of the real thing, you know? The smell of the oil and everything . . .and none of the kick."

"And the same result?" When she asked, it was with lips on his skin by chance, and warm breath ghosting over his hair.

Ben nodded. He didn't need to tell her about Quentin's eyes lolling, or the pathetic smack of his peashooter on brass buckles. He didn't need to tell her again, but he wanted to surrender to sleep, so he did. "Yes. Always the same. Turns out the bastard couldn't come up with anything worse."

As he inhaled the deep earth of the wall so near, and the hero wrapped around him, Ben marveled that his little tragedies couldn't be further corrupted by a creature from the blackest depths. It wasn't a comfort, exactly, but it was something.


End file.
